Questions and Objections

Abstract

Many objections may be raised to the basic thesis of this book. Humanity is too stupid or selfish to do what needs to be done to become more civilized. This is true, at least, of those who hold power. We are victims of an economic-political power structure which makes progress towards a more civilized world impossible. Greater civilization is not compatible with individual liberty. The sheer size of the world’s population makes more cooperatively rational action, required for greater civilization, impossible. Science is too different from social life for it to be possible to learn from scientific progress how to make social progress towards a more civilized world. The very idea of a rational world is an obscenity. It would be a world in which people lose individual freedom and become enslaved to the dictates of Reason. These and other objections are all decisively demolished.